Hey you.
First off: I have been wrestling with some jewelry in the new collection, and it’s been challenging. I’m refusing to cave on my own quality standards, and right now, that means there’s a lot of reworking and learning going on. It’s coming along. Pens are coming along as well – I did finish the 50 kit challenge, and the remaining 20+ pens, seam rippers, and stilletos should be in the shop this week, though there’s already quite a few in the shop. I should have a bunch more up before the next letter. In the meantime, because my art and soap are my livelihood, have you seen the original paintings currently available? If there’s one you wanted that’s not in there, ping me, and if I have it, we’ll talk. (I don’t mind, and only bite if asked.)
And off we go.
Each year we do a deep clean of the fridge, usually sometime after the Thanksgiving (US) leftovers have started to take on a life of their own and are aggressively refusing to make room for anything else without shelf space hostage negotiations. We empty the whole fridge, take out and disassemble the shelves and drawers, scrub and dry everything, sort or discard what we took out, put all the shelves back in, and finally, optimistically decide on the ways we’re going to keep it all organized the next year.
There’s a distinct sense of reclamation in cleaning those places you’ve left untended, and the fridge is no exception.
I feel more like a responsible adult when the fridge is clean, more like my entire life isn’t getting away from me, that things are more under control than I usually feel like they are. I won’t lie, I enjoy the (temporary) experience of living the illusion that I could be the kind of person who has a clean, organized fridge all the time. I get to imagine and experience what I think it would be like if all of my life was neat, organized, and tidy each time I open that fridge. You know, in the same way New Year’s resolutions give us a chance to dream what it would be like if we were the kind of person who had already achieved those goals.
One of the inevitabilities of cleaning out the fridge is that moment when you’re standing under those kitchen lights, holding a mystery leftover or empty jar, trying to remember what it was or why you bought it, and why didn’t you get rid of it months ago? Sometimes, it’s something you tried on a whim, or a meal that you ended up not liking, or you know, that bagged salad threatening sentience and world domination if it could just escape the bag in the back of the drawer. Yet, even as you stand there wondering what you were thinking, within that container is the answer: once upon a time, you were certain that you were going to be the kind of person who’d like that vegan pizza, who’d eat a couple olives instead of an entire bag of potato chips at night, who was absolutely going to use that bagged salad.
Sometimes we don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do, but more often, it’s more that we don’t accept who we actually are. We ignore the signs we give ourselves – the things that bring us joy when we do them, eat them, drink them, play them, feel them. Not just temporary satisfaction, distraction, or a quick fix reprieve because it’s all we have the leftover energy to microwave, but the things that renew us – the things that feed us. We ignore the way something inside us lights up, turns over, kicks on, and roars to life when we’re around or engaged with those things. Maybe we have been so busy trying to be who we’re supposed to be that we don’t even know what we like that brings us to life that way, the things that feed us, that nourish us.
Our fridge here before cleaning looked a whole lot like the work desk of someone trying desperately to figure out what they like. It made perfect sense to me. We have three people in this household in transitory, liminal spaces – standing at major thresholds in a lifetime. One high schooler barreling towards graduation, a first year college student, and then me. Have I mentioned yet that these last two years since Steve died are the longest I’ve ever been head of household in my entire life? This is the first time I haven’t had to worry if the man I was with was going to veto what I wanted. I’m almost 40, and just now have the space and freedom to figure out what I want and like and how I like things done. It’s a lot like a second round of being a teenager, just with adult responsibilities, no curfew, and a much darker sense of humor. Also, I can eat whatever I want.
So you can imagine what our fridge looked like as we each – and together – have tried to figure out what we liked, how we liked it, and who else did or didn’t also like it, all within the household ruleset of NO SHAMING.
(The no shaming thing is big. We don’t have a say in what we do or do not like, only if we allow ourselves those things and how we judge ourselves for them. Think about it: how well does telling yourself you don’t love something go? Yeah, it doesn’t. With three neurodivergent people in the same household, it’s hard enough figuring out what we like and what works to start off with, without bringing shame into it, so when we find something that works, well, shame is not an option. Besides, weird just means it’s unfamiliar. We adjust.)
In this way, our fridge is a curious reflection of the state of our lives in a way other places in our homes and lives are not. We put things in there in hope of our best selves, in denial of who we are, to hold something in stasis because we’re not sure how to deal with it yet, or can’t bear to part with it just yet – the back of the fridge is a vista of denial, a motley collection of jars and moldy takeout, each item a chilled reflection of our refusal to extend to ourselves acceptance, in the same way the clothes that don’t fit in the closet are.
Fridges, with their ability to delay decay, to hide from our sight the things we’re unsure of how to deal with yet, and their icy ability to store leftovers like old hopes we’re afraid to pop the top of the tupperware on, are something of a liminal space themselves in that regard. The things that we hope will or think should nourish and feed us, we hide them away in there, with best of intentions of getting back to them, of actually using them, of not forgetting them. Or, most challenging, of returning to the person you thought you would be when you bought or made them.
Along those same lines, a friend and I were talking on Twitter about this sensation of stasis and liminality, particularly with how intense it’s been the last three years, how the pandemic has felt… well, like being leftover in a fridge, if you will. Waiting, in storage, uncertain, static, cold, not sure if you’d make it out and feel alive again, if there was a way to build a life on the other side of this threshold. What we’d both found is that to cross that threshold, we had to build something entirely new, and we had to go in directions we’d never quite considered before. Scary ones, weird ones, unconventional ones. We had to do the unexpected, and we found things we loved that we had no idea we’d love. If it wasn’t for the dark, difficult period of stasis, who knows, we might have kept going in a direction that left us wondering if this was all there was to life.
For as easily as I can write it now, getting through it was about as much fun as deep cleaning a fridge. Did I have to clean out ideas of who I was? Oh, you know it. But that is the way of the fridge. We put things in there, store things, and at some point you deal with them or you run out of space, and when you’re sitting in the dark and cold long enough, you start to deal with those random jars you bought last year, or the cookies from your relative that you felt too guilty to throw away, or the old salad dressing your ex left in there that you will never eat.
Sometimes the pause in the fridge is exactly what you need. Without the pause, you might not have considered a new direction, a new person, a new job, a new craft, a new style, a new way of thinking, a new location. Not that I’m saying there’s a divine plan, just that sometimes, it turns out to be a positive thing, even if, like a fridge, it’s dark and bitterly cold. Sometimes, it’s because of the cold that leaves you feeling numb and empty that you can feel the faint warm breeze of something you’re going to love – warmth that you would have missed otherwise. Sometimes that bitterly cold period works in your favor – it keeps you from burning out and decaying at room temperature before you have a chance to become someone you love.
Sometimes that dark night of the soul is just the fridge light going out when the door shuts.
May you always find the acceptance to let go of the leftovers you won’t eat or enjoy,
A. Markov
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